Moose Bay is a town that's, well, it's somewhere. The only true geographical reference is the "elevation" painted on the old water tower - the same as Green Bay, Wisconsin. The motive power and cabeese for the railroad is Milwaukee, but beneath the streets run the subways of the Moose Bay Transit Authority. In a place that is currently made of pink foam will rise the old industrial dock known as Mooseport. It will be served by the Moose Bay Transfer Agency, just to add confusion by overloading the MBTA name.
Coal is mined on a small scale in Moose Bay. The fortuitous location of a coal seam nearby has its roots not in the Carboniferous Period, like most coal, but rather in the Eisenhower Period when I bought a lot of hoppers and an old Vollmer flood loader when I wore a younger man's clothes.
Sheep may safely graze, but hogs are in trouble. The local Swift packing plant ships pork products, which arrive in double-deck stock cars. Mmmmmm.....bacon.
The Strumpet Brewery not only ships its own product, but also is a contract brewer for several other beers and ales. That's an excuse to buy beer reefers.
And the moose are still around. Drive carefully.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
My Port Destiny terminal RR is a fictional railroad in North Florida ( similar to the St Andrews Bay RR ) but a lot shorter , in Ho Scale . My railroad is jointly owned by the Southern RR and the L&N RR , but operated independantly , but it gives the Southern RR a Florida Gulf Coast port . The PDT has adopted many of the Southern RR practices , but not all . Along with a small seaport there is some industrial switching and there is still passenger service with the Southern RR making a connection at Port Destiny , where the PDT runs a passenger train down to the Beach area in the old town area .
With it's compact yard and and ample switching the work can get complicated with both railroads leaving strings of cars and picking up out bound cars as well as passenger trains , there is always a challenge.
I decided to set up a timber machining shop on my land to supply a solid timber furniture manufacturer which I built from the ground up. Having the local rail run through my property we decided to submit a tender to re-build and lease a section of RR off SP and have diesel fuel supplied by rail to onsite storage tanks and bowsers for local and industrial traffic to use. Fork lifts, trucks loaders and generators etc...
The furniture manufacturing company had a spur installed to allow greater product distribution potential for the growing company. Who knows where they will end up. I do believe some investors are keen to buy a private switcher for the company and acquire some plantation land near by. (my shed) hehe
I'm sure a logging company will be contracted within the year and milled timber will be making its way to the machine shops of Bucket Furniture Co. soon.
Cheers...
Chris from down under...
We're all here because we're not all there...
The Arkansas Southern is a fictional line that runs thru the ozarks. from Southeast MO to northern Ark.
Mr. LMDnot to sound mean, but my layout is based around the fact that my railroad bought all the illinois major railroads including the rock island.
Well, since the thread has changed Subjects and Topics for that matter .... My prior post was a history of my prior N-scale railroad. On the new more general topic of freelance and not bound to N-scale. When I switched back to HO scale, the N-scale Pine Ridge and North River became garage sale fodder. My new plan is to model around Pueblo Colorado in the mid 1950's. Unlike the original poster my railroad certainly did not buy up all the competition in fact the whole point of Pueblo is where I can get a steel mill with its own railroad, the Missouri Pacific, Santa Fe, Denver Rio Grande, Colorado Southern (Burlington), and Rock Island all meeting in one place. My railroad is the Pueblo & Arkansas River Valley RR. It aquired (as in real life) the Canon City San Juan but in my world it di d not honor the Treaty of Boston and kept the Royal Gorge for itself. Similarly Tesla's 1889 Colorado Springs experiments proved more fruitful and he built his first wireless power plant just north of Pueblo. It is served by the Pike's Peak, Fossil Creek & Tesla short line.
As I said before this gets me a steel industry, all the farming (especially sugar beets) to the east, mountains to the west, major coal to the south to be moved up nort for the power plants, and tons of connections with other railroads at the height of post WWiI passenger traffic. I have not developed a history yet, other that that which was recorded for the real Pueblo & Arkansas.
While my layout is freelanced, my approach has more in common with prototype modelers than freelancers. I chose to take scenes from various prototypes and string them together in a layout. Rather than one California shortline, I chose scenes from several.
I do have several freelanced scenes on the bottom deck but the majority of the places and scenes on the layout are based on a prototype location. I have scratchbuilt or found kits for most of the structures in the prototype scenes and have tried to faithfully recreate them while adapting them to fit on the layout. Alterations such as flipping the track scheme adding a siding here and there are considered fair game.
All of the rolling stock is from the era and many of the signature cars from the various shortlines are modeled. The locos and cabooses are also from the various prototypes and lettered accordingly.
In general, this approach does allow me to research specific locations and rolling stock without limiting myself to one prototype. I have tried to get the feel of the prototype location and equipment even if the specifics are not exact.
As for a backstory, I did that on my old layout and frankly no one but me cared. If I started to explain it to visitors, their eyes would glaze over in a hurry. On this layout I don't even bother with a backstory and I hope that the consistent application of standards and details give the layout enough cohesiveness to make a backsotry unnecessary.
Guy
see stuff at: the Willoughby Line Site
I guess my 'backstory' is really more a guiding theme - something to guide the creation process. Subject to change, revision, discarding, and starting anew as most guiding principles are. I really only set out with one so that I can choose appropriate industries, as well as limit my selection of eras, buildings, and track design.
Considering I am planning on the idea of an America with modern universal passenger train services, I should perhaps plan most of my train routes to have overhead lines, so I have a reason to purchase a TGV...when I win the lottery.
Right now all I have is some track and roadbed. I think I might do something along the lines of a freelance UP sub. Man, I need to stop procrastinating on that scenery...
Acela
The timbers beneath the rails are not the only ties that bind on the railroad. --Robert S. McGonigal
My layout, the Cherokee Foothills Railroad depicts northern South Carolina, particularly Oconee & Pickens Counties. It is based on the premise of a railroad paralleling SC Route 11, the Cherokee Foothills National Scenic Bi Way.
Modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad in N Scale.
www.prr-nscale.blogspot.com
GP-9 Man -- When I was in N scale I did something similar and still toy with the theme. In my case it was a bridge line from Spartanburg to Chattanooga, it's main selling point being the short cut over the Blue Ridge, avoiding the terminal time for either an Atlanta or Ashville route. I think the upstate Carolina region you're talking is very modelgenic in terms of scenary, industries, and railroad variety and often overlooked by the mainstream press.
I'm doing more protolancing, but it's heavy on the lacing part.
I'm modelling the City of Madison Port Authority with a twist. First off, the Madison Hill wasn't closed after the 1992 rebuild, but was maintined and thus allowed a few industries to come into Madison (cheap land, river and rail access). Recently, through grant money, the CMPA has aquired two Genset locomotives, and is looking into reaching Columbus on the old Pennsy line, so that trains can interchange in 4 directions; North/South to Indianapolis/Louisville on the LIRC, and East/West to St. Louis/Cinncy on the Chessie (not CSX) ex-B&O mainline. Car Storage is booming, as the Auto makers needed/need places after the recession to park cars, and a former Military Base seemed the better option to streets in the middle of towns. There's also industries in the Proving Grounds handling car repair, Private Coach maintenece/restoration/storage (which in 2011 was made true, as the CMPA in real life is in fact sitting on one man's private railroad car) and a freaight car and engine leasor.
-Morgan
My Bunker Hill and Eastern is set in the early 50s and is a bridge line that runs roughly from Brunswick, Maine east to the Belfast area. It kind of runs between the MEC Rockland branch to the south and the MEC Lower Road (Waterville to Augusta to Brunswick) to the north. Bunker Hill is the runling grade on the route. I take town names from towns in the midcoast Maine area, like Sheepscott, a small city, which in real life is a small village. There are connections to the MEC and MEC has running rights on part.
To complicate things, my last layout modeled MEC and B&M around 1980, and that part still exists (and needs to be expanded) on one side of the layout. I just could not give up the locos and rolling stock that I painted and detailed....
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
The Grande Valley Railway is a shortline that runs from Elkhart,Ind. to Grand Rapids,MI. on ex NS-Conrail-Pennsvania trackage.From Grand Rapids it goes both northwest to Ludington,and northeast to Port Huron/Sarnia on former CSX trackage.
Trackage is currently being replaced on existing right of way to Petosky,MI.The GVR interchanges with CSX in Grand Rapids,(I also model CSX for my proto fix The GVR interchanges with NS in Elkhart.
My railroad is a "what if" combining several things I like:
1. Desert scenery, especially the type of desert found in southeastern San Diego county.
2. Lots of tunnels and trestles, similar to the San Diego & Arizona's Carrizo Gorge.
3. Old, western-style mines and mining towns such as those found in Nevada and the Mojave desert. I also wanted to include some abandoned mines and ghost towns.
4. Steam railroading, with some early diesel.
5. Funky narrow gauge equipment.
So... I envisioned an alternate reality, in which the rocky, rugged desert areas east of San Diego were blessed with much greater mineral wealth than exists in "real life". Gold was discovered there sometime in the 1880's. A few small mining camps and towns sprang up, but quickly withered away due to the lack of water and the high cost of transporting supplies into, and ore out of, the rugged terrain.
In the late 1890's richer strikes were found, providing the impetus to build a railroad into the region. Narrow gauge was chosen due to the difficult terrain and to reduce costs.
The region experienced several cycles of boom and bust over the following decades. Just when things looked bleakest, tungsten ore was found. This vital metal kept things going through WWII, when gold mines and other "non-essential" activities were shut down.
The post-war era brought an influx of tourists. The railroad had struggled along with steam, unable to afford significant upgrades, and now its ancient engines were becoming an attraction in their own right. The few remaining mines still produce enough ore for a daily freight train, but most of the railroad's business now comes from tourists enjoying the spectacular scenery and historic structures.
http://youtu.be/9yeiCCiTwQw
Ray,
Great layout. I love the rocks and rugged feel.
Proto-freelanced Burlington and North Western railroad - a joint operation between the BN and CNW - located somewhere in the upper Midwest during the “roaring” 1990s. Similar to the Camas Prairie, DRI&NW or even modern-day CSAO the B&NW uses motive power and rolling stock from its parent roads while Amtrak provides daily coach service to Chicago and points in-between. Forestry, paper and agricultural commodities are the primary business of the B&NW, along with the import of products necessary to support the daily lives of citizens in the B&NW’s service territory.
The B&NW doesn’t operate in a vacuum – interchanging with its two joint owners as well as other modes including truck and barge terminals – transferring freight to where it needs to go, and at the lowest cost to its customers.
Sounds interesting. Do you have a website or some place with more info and pictures?
I like steam. I grew up with steam, albeit in the UK.
Unfortunately, affordable models of Canadian steam are as rare as hen's teeth and the available diesel models are almost as scarce. Painting a stock [Insert fav. manufacturer] Geep in Canadian Pacific or Canadian National colours doesn't make it an accurate model of a Canadian diesel.
I do not subscribe to the "It's my model railway so I can do what I like" mantra as that is far too frequently used to justify unrealistic modelling choices. Running a current diesel along side a wood burning 4-4-0 for example may be fine for some but not for me. Having said that, there's nothing wrong with it if the owner gets satisfaction from what they are running. But that's just not my way.
I was left with no choice but to create the Canadian Great Eastern Railway (GER).
To keep me on-track, I wrote a history of the GER from its earliest beginnings up to 1977, the year I was to model. I even created a steam and diesel roster from the beginning of W.W. II in 1939 right up to 1977. This has been a great help in keeping me on the right path and has only been slightly modfied from the first draft as new models have become available.
When I started to build the GER in the early 1990, there were sadly no good quality, plastic steam locos available so I set the GER in 1977. I chose 1977 as you could still see a lot of steam era freight cars and roof walks were just being removed from existing freight cars and new ones were being delivered sans roofwalks. This gave me a wide choice in freight cars. I freelanced the GER due to the lack of accurate Canadian diesels so in my case, all diesels were correct for the GER. I chose only diesels that were suitable for southern Quebec, with one or two exceptions to make up for models that were just not available. RS-1s for example never operated new in Canada, only second hand.
Then Bachmann produced the Spectrum 2-8-0!
A truly trend setting standard in North American RTR plastic steam. I bought one, liked it so much I now have something like eight of them. That was the end of the 1977 GER. A new steam era was born based on the Spectrum 2-8-0. Even if they never produced another steam engine of that quality, the GER was going to be steam.
I reset the GER in 1958 which means nothing on the GER can be newer than 1958. A 1959 automobile is acceptable as autos are sold in the year preceding the model year but nothing else. Anything that was post 1958 was either backdated or disposed of. Even lettering on businesses was changed as Helvetica just wasn't around in 1958. Many diesels were repainted as were many freight cars to reflect the new 1958 setting. On the previous freight only 1977 GER there were no passenger facilities so the approaches to Atwater were modified to include the station and the abandoned station at Dorset Center was refurbished and put back into service. A new flag stop was built at Exeter. The old hand operated Airfix turntable in Granville was scrapped and a new Walthers automatic turntable and roundhouse was installed along with coaling and water facilities. At Berger Yard in Atwater, the single road metal engine house was giving to a friend and a new wooden two road engine house was scratch built and a water tower added to the west leg of the wye.
While the GER may be freelanced, my goal has always been that it should not be obviously freelance. The GER is supposed to look and operate like a prototypical 1958 railway, set in southern Quebec. Every single steam engine, for example, has been modified to give it the GER "family" look. From the air tank on the pilot deck, skirts on running boards and all weather cabs on the later engines, and kit-bashed tenders and standard headlight positions. Much has also been done to the diesel fleet to bring that into the GER family. Given my goal of a realistic looking freelanced railway, you'll find no articulated steam nor any 2-8-4s as these just didn't run in Canada, with a couple of very minor exceptions and definitely not in the part of the country that I model. Apart from yard switchers, you'll also find no one-offs on the GER loco fleet as I'm always trying for the fleet look and that cannot be achieved with the one of everything approach.
Having these self imposed "standards" has enabled me to not impulse buy. I always have to ask myself, "Would this be seen in southern Quebec?" If the answer is "No", then it makes the purchasing decisions so much easier.So all of the above is how the GER was conceived and built to look the way it did before it was scrapped.
Cheers
Roger T.
Home of the late Great Eastern Railway see: - http://www.greateasternrailway.com
For more photos of the late GER see: - http://s94.photobucket.com/albums/l99/rogertra/Great_Eastern/
I am a fan of the classic Burlington Northern circa 1980-- none of that pseudo-GN orange BNSF stuff for me! That said, I don't have the space/resources to model 4 SD40-2s pulling a manifest freight through the Cascade Tunnel, with two more helpers cut in mid-train, and 4 more on the rear, which was a common sight in those days (I lived on the Chumstick Cutoff near Leavenworth at that time).
So for years I was a armchair railroader, engaged in "mental railroading" instead of actual modelling. But finally I hit upon a workable solution: Model a short line that interchanged with the BN, thereby allowing me to to run lots of BN equipment, even in a very limited space. Inspired by the tiny prototype Ballard Terminal RR, I invented a shortline industrial railroad at the other end of town.
My backstory is that following the Staggers Rail Act in 1980, BN took advantage of deregulation to cast off some unprofitable local industrial switching lines in the Green River Valley to concentrate on long distance hauling. The Seattle Terminal RR uses a couple of actual locations-- the Black River Junction, for example-- but I don't try to model any actual scenes or industries. Keeping the local town names firmly sets the location to visitors. Transfer runs from Balmer Yard (BN) and Argo Yard (UP) provide connection with the outside world. The 1980 era allows me to run lots of SD40-2s, and you still see cabooses, and even a few old 40 foot boxcars that still have roofwalks.
If I had more space I would expand the BN trackage into a loop with a siding where the interchange was located, and I could have long BN freights just orbit, or with some hidden staging, have meets there.
Well my railroad is the South Massey Railway, which is a small local railroad that serves the town of South Massey and interchanges with the Norfolk Southern. This railroad is built on rails that were once abandoned by Norfolk & Western. RIght now the SMRY is leasing 6 engines from the NS, 2 GP38-2s, one old GP35, 2 SD40-2s and one MP15DC. The GP35 is on a lease to buy option and the SMRY is considering buying an SD45 and an old NW2 for its own fleet. The layout at the moment is in a room too small to model all the scenes and industries I want to model. So for now it is host to a Saw Mill and lumber yard (saw mill off layout), barrel factory and interchange yard. I am looking to add at least one more industry. There is daily passenger service to a nearby big city for those commuters that dont want to drive.
In the past and future I am planning on a couple of additional scenes. A railway museum where the community banded together and purchased the N&W 610 from the scrappers and restored it for excursion service in the summer months, this Museum will have a round house with turntable and some notable exibits. Since South Massey is right on the water there is an intermodal container port with intermodal traffic moving through the city daily. This is an attractive port to shippers since its low volume of ships usually means they can be unloaded and loaded much faster and with little to no waiting in the harbor. This keeps the trains busy and the docks are always working 24-7. Since all of this needs power there must be a power plant to feed the coal to. Coal is brought in from the Pocahontas fields by the NS. And you cant forget that the little town of South Massey also exports powdered cement to be used in nearby ready mix plants.
Now when I can build my larger layout I am going to make my best effort to add the businesses in the second paragraph, and provide other cities that the trains travel to.
Massey
A Veteran, whether active duty, retired, national guard, or reserve, is someone who, at one point in his or her life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life."
Did anyone find it difficult to find certain locomotives, rolling stock, ect. in stores or online?
Mr. LMD, Owner, founder
The Central Chicago & Illinois Railroad
Texas Zepher Mr. LMD: not to sound mean, but my layout is based around the fact that my railroad bought all the illinois major railroads including the rock island. Alll? from the Rock Island era. That would mean that your freelance world has very few railroads other than your own.
Mr. LMD: not to sound mean, but my layout is based around the fact that my railroad bought all the illinois major railroads including the rock island.
Alll? from the Rock Island era. That would mean that your freelance world has very few railroads other than your own.
My freelance railroad will consist of The IC, CNW, CGW, and RI all own by the Central Illinois Railroad, or Blac Rail.
My backstory is that my railroad avatar, Mr. LMD, buys the three railroads I already listed from their respective owners and based them in Evans, Illinois (ghost town in reality). 90% of my locos, rolling stock, and vehicles will have one of the three logos while the other 10% will be locos and rolling stock i will have painted to represent my avatar having a few new locos and cars to his rail line.
The only industries my railroad will haul is coal, mining, logging, and a powerplant with room for expansion.
Update: Mr. LMD now controls not only the IC, CNW, CGW, and RI, but also the PRR and SP.
Any new or current freelancers?
I'm doing prototype based freelancing, heavy on the proto- in certain respects but not in others. The real Western Pacific had seven subdivisions, but none of them provided the exact mix of operations I wanted. By creating a fictitious 8th subdivision, I could model the operations I liked from the 5th, 6th and 7th subs without trying to shoehorn specific locations into the train room.
Rob Spangler
I do the same as Rod. My Santa Fe in Oklahoma follows the Okla Div and the Enid district with all the grain elevators in 1989. Very proto oriented. However, I removed the old ATSF Orient line that ran from central Olahoma into Cherokee OK and in its place sold the track and assets to the "Oklahoma Northern" railroad. Now I have the best of both worlds. I had decals made for the ON, painted motive power in an OU red with white trim and gave the ON trackage rights over the Enid district to Guthrie and then to Oklahoma City. Lot's of fun and it spices up the proto running.
Bob
I'm still planning but I'm heavily influenced by a where I grew up, where my wife grew up, and a few odds and ends that I think would be interesting to model. Where I grew up along could fill a big articel in MR about all the specific rail served industries over the past century. Now about the biggest thing is a rails-to-trails of the original CNW line that goes N/NW about 10 miles.
The two most unusual items include:
A volcano with minimal mining operations in and around it. Project is underway in N scale.
A Soylent Green plant. Will probably end up on the HO layout.
I run both diesel and steam, early to late. I know, makes no sense at all. Cheers! Rob
Cederstrand The two most unusual items include: A volcano with minimal mining operations in and around it. Project is underway in N scale. A Soylent Green plant. Will probably end up on the HO layout. I run both diesel and steam, early to late. I know, makes no sense at all. Cheers! Rob
As long it's function-able and you are pleased with your layout. I, myself, wanted to put a dam in my layout as well as a subway. i decided not to